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The unit’s revenue and pretax income – both of which set quarterly records – don’t fully reflect that decline, however. The company bills for its fee-based accounts primarily at the beginning of each quarter, so the 8% sequential decline in fee-based accounts to $338.8 billion won’t be reflected in the top line until the company reports results for the current quarter.

For its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 31, Raymond James’ Private Client Group reported net revenue of $1.36 billion, up 4% from the previous quarter and 10% from the same quarter a year earlier, the company said in a release.

The unit’s “revenue growth during the quarter was mostly driven by higher assets in fee-based accounts at the beginning the quarter partially offset by the decline in brokerage revenues,” the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based company said.

Pretax income for the Private Client Group was $164 million, up 25% from the preceding quarter and 6% from a year earlier.

At the end of the quarter, Raymond James had 7,815 advisors, an increase of two from September and 278 from a year before.

“We continue to experience strong levels of interest from prospective advisors across all of our affiliation options and benefit from low regrettable attrition of existing advisors,” Raymond James CEO Paul Reilly said in the release. “The net addition of financial advisors was low relative to recent quarters, partly due to a large number of planned retirements where the firm retained the vast majority of the client assets.”

On Wednesday, the company announced it was adding deal-making firepower in the wealth management space with the acquisition of Silver Lane Advisors, a boutique investment bank.

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